BART is close to hiring Kenton Rainey, the former police chief of Fairfield, to head its police force, which is in the midst of reforms after the shooting of an unarmed train rider by a BART officer, sources said Wednesday.

The agency's general manger, Dorothy Dugger, offered the job to Rainey last month after getting input from a panel of community leaders, BART's board of directors and other Bay Area police chiefs.

Rainey accepted the job, sources said, but the hiring process is not complete and Rainey has not officially been hired. If he joins BART, he will oversee a full-service force of about 200 officers.

"His ability to deal with diverse communities in a meaningful way was really what set him apart from the other candidates," said BART board member Lynette Sweet. "We really need somebody who can be a police officer and also a spokesman for the department."

Rainey would take over a department that has been under a microscope since former BART Officer Johannes Mehserle shot and killed train rider Oscar Grant during an arrest at an Oakland station on Jan. 1, 2009.

BART spokesman Linton Johnson declined to comment Wednesday. Rainey has declined to comment as well in recent days.

In seeking the job, Rainey, 51, described himself as a reformer with a record of forging close relationships with the community. He beat out LaDonna Harris, a commander with the Alameda County Sheriff's Department.

After resigning from the Fairfield post in August, Rainey became the commander of San Antonio's airport police division. In a 30-year career, the Chicago native has also worked for Whittier (Los Angeles County); Dayton, Ohio; and Ventura County.

Mehserle faces a murder trial next month. Mehserle is white, and Grant was black. Many activists, community leaders and others believe racial profiling contributed to the incident, or that the shooting reflected a larger problem of police brutality against young men of color. Rainey is black, as is Harris.

After the Grant killing, auditors criticized the way BART trains, deploys and disciplines officers, and said the agency had done little to build trust with patrons.